In the USA and in the UK we find fewer people are studying the humanities.Here it is because of the economic climate.. people wish to study “useful” subjects.Literature won’t get you a job,perhaps.It only enables you to live better.Already in schools the study of Greek and Latin has almost gone.
Economics still gets students………. odd considering that economists did not forecast the recession but were up to their necks in mathematical models.Economicis not a science and cannot be.I believe it’s a branch of philosophy in a broad sense.
I admit I did not study what we called “The Arts” at University but most of my friends did.But I read poetry.I liked Auden greatly.I read all the great novels.I read Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch.I read Evelyn Waugh/I even read Nabokov…. what a writer!And I read Shakespeare Plays.
But with the much higher fees,recession and other worries,fewer students will spend three years studying the humanities.Plumbing or Carpentry are better options
I am thinking of writing some new plays.
A Fit Plumber’s Nightly Schemes
Witches astir.
Ham to let.
Sing Fear.
Make up for the Mind
A Midsummer Balls Up.
The Emptiest.
Please defreeze me,let me grow.
A man without limits
Much Ado about Hacking.
As you Recycle it.
Julius Seized the Emails.
Fool Us and Squeeze Us.
Twelfth Fright.
Hacked to Death.
The Blaming of the Guru,
Prospero Not.
http://www.debate.org/opinions/are-the-arts-too-elitist
http://theamericanscholar.org/the-decline-of-the-english-department/?key=55705194
Related articles
- Are you a good reader? Take Nabokov’s quiz. (michiganderspost.com)
- The benefits of multilingual education (tech.mit.edu)
- Literature in Digital Humanity (dh101.ch)
- Susan Sontag on Literature and Freedom (brainpickings.org)
- Task #2: The Scholarly Conversation (scsmith143.wordpress.com)
- Bill Martin- A Champion of Children’s Literature (vastimaginations.wordpress.com)
- Nabokov, part 2: The Answers and the Grand Experiement (michiganderspost.com)
- Hard-Core Literature Course (clarissasblog.com)
- I Never Speak Metaphorically (lareviewofbooks.org)
- Other National Literatures (cwlgroup4project.wordpress.com)
How my heart sings 
We have lost the idea that in a decent everyone should be able to read,write and do arithmetic.I do understand as I used to teach…it’s so disheartening when they lack basic skills after years in school…. Y think it harms society.Thank you for commenting,Carroll and have a good weekend
Colleges should not be vocational training in the first place. That they are is one reason we have students in college that are functionally illiterate. I have two problems in teaching my introductory statistics class: many students can’t read and many students can’t add. I am at a total loss what to do about it. I am sometimes afraid that education has virtually disappeared, and I blame our increasingly anti-intellectual culture.
Colleges are mostly at fault here, I believe. No one explains to you as a freshman that it really doesn’t matter what you study as an undergrad. It may as well be something you enjoy. I’m an English major. People assume you only can pursue teaching with that major. Wrong. I could study medicine, Law, International Business, and anything else, really. I love the people asking if I am going to be a teacher who can’t compose a work memo correctly.
It’s disturbing to think of the loss for future generations
It’s due to economics that fewer people are studying the liberal arts! Ha! I went to a great, liberal arts university in the States and while I never had a high-paying career, I wouldn’t have traded my experience for the world.
Jobs have become so specialized, but we’ll always need educators and do-gooders and deep thinkers… (or so I hope).
Thanks for the follow! I just bookmark people due to my visual impairment and general sick feeling 24/7–much easier as I don’t blog much!
You’re welcome and I’m not very active on WP anymore, so my apologies. I absolutely detest audio books! I tried one and couldn’t focus or follow at all, and it was a book I had read years ago. My issue is that I’m a very visual person and I only started to lose my vision a couple years ago (and I’m middle-aged). I literally can’t learn any other way! Everyone in my family is a visual learner, so it’s in the genes. I like to say that I’m stuck in auditory and tactile land now. What a terrible spot. I need my calendars and lists and notes and the rest. I can get around some things with my blown-up laptop and to-do lists written with fat, Sharpie markers, but I can’t read text on paper (unless large and still hard) or anything for that long on my laptop. It’s part keratoconus (corneal disease) and part convergence insufficiency (eyes don’t converge when looking close-up), both of which are caused by my genetic disorder. What a mess! I was reading chapter books by age 6 or so and losing books and interesting magazines is very sad indeed. Thanks for the thought, though, and sorry for the long explanation!
Take care…